Localization and Tracking of Mobile Attackers Using Hyperbolic Position Bounding in Vehicular Networks

A malicious insider in a wireless network may carry out a number of devastating attacks without fear of retribution by authenticating its messages with untraceable credentials. Hyperbolic position bounding (HPB) provides a mechanism to probabilistically estimate the candidate location of an attack message’s originator using received signal strength (RSS) reports, without knowledge of the transmitting power. We specialize the applicability of HPB into the realm of vehicular networks and provide alternate HPB algorithms to improve localization precision and computational efficiency. We extend HPB for tracking the consecutive locations of a mobile attacker. We evaluate the localization and tracking performance of HPB in a vehicular scenario featuring a variable number of receivers and a known navigational layout. We find that HPB can position a transmitting device within stipulated guidelines for emergency services localization accuracy.